Why does governance in our everyday online spaces matter? In this launch event, Nathan Schneider introduces his new book, "Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life," which will be available free and open access from University of California Press on February 27.

​The book argues that we should turn the conversation about the internet and democracy upside-down. Rather than trying to find top-down fixes for the problems of the internet, we should be looking for ways to enable democratic repair with and through our online lives. Starting with the earliest online communities, a design pattern of "implicit feudalism" has constrained the options and imaginaries that communities could use to organize themselves. Schneider argues that decades of living with such systems have contributed to the erosion of democratic politics around the world. But there is another way. Our online spaces don't have to be governed by legacy systems susceptible to corruption under absolutist rule of the few. Instead, they can be sites for society to democratically coordinate in ways that are inclusive, empowering, and restorative. Our online spaces can be governable spaces.

​"Governable Spaces" was written through years of learning from the research and experiments in the Metagov community. In this event, we invite people interested in the book to join Metagov's weekly seminar, a backbone of our laboratory for digital governance.